Analysis: Norfolk State has waited ... and waited for this

BALTIMORE

Twenty-seven years ago, an NCAA championship football bracket included Norfolk State for the first and only time.

Those 1984 Spartans, coach Willard Bailey's first team, went 10-1 in their CIAA championship season. They departed the Division II tournament field in the first round, however, on a 10-point loss to Towson State.

But they would be back soon; of course they would. Isn't that how players and coaches and teams and programs are trained to think, to feel, to believe?

As six head coaches came to know - seven if you include a guy who once took the job and almost immediately gave it back - "soon" didn't happen.

But maybe that makes Norfolk State's pending postseason return, secured by a 47-14 triumph Saturday at Morgan State that locked down the MEAC title, the purest of nectars to a long-famished fan base.

Because it was for this renown that the Spartans (9-2, 7-1) made their then-controversial jump from Division II to the I-AA MEAC in 1997.

And it's for this turn in the national spotlight in two weeks - as 1 of 20 teams in what's now known as the Football Championship Subdivision tournament - that athletic director Marty Miller, among many, has waited.

And waited.

"I never would have believed it would take us this long to win another football championship," Miller said amid the joyous scrum of players, fans and families on the floor of Hughes Stadium.

Miller had just exchanged warm words with coach Pete Adrian, hired in 2005 by Miller when the longtime NSU baseball coach was still NSU's "interim" AD. Miller laughed when Adrian, playing off Miller's pet phrase, informed him the Spartans hadn't just brought home the bacon, but the "whole hog."

"The first thing they told me was I had to find a football coach," Miller recalled, shaking his head at the memory. "I think this just shows Pete Adrian was and is the man for Norfolk State football."

The record will show this playoff bid was boxed up and delivered to NSU in the opening minutes of the second half, when the Spartans, up 20-14 at the break, returned from the locker room hungry and the hibernating Bears yawned and rolled over.

NSU running back Randy Maynes took the opening play of the third quarter off-tackle 56 yards to the end zone. The Spartans forced a quick punt, and on the first play of this possession, got 48 yards out of a short Chris Walley-to-Keith Johnson crossing pass that led to a field goal.

Morgan State fumbled the ensuing kickoff, linebacker Marcell Coke rumbled 16 yards to the goal-line's shadow, Walley scored from a yard out, and the Bears were 23 points down and done.

Done to, hold onto your helmets, MEAC champion Norfolk State.

"A football school!" hollered linebacker Corwin Hammond, one of two dozen fifth-year seniors to whom Adrian hitched his bandwagon of patient progress toward credibility and then contention.

"We've finally eclipsed this average little point, or asterisk, or whatever, that people have always tried to put on us. We're No. 1, and they didn't expect that."

Adrian, the defensive coordinator at Bethune-Cookman when Miller made him a head coach for a second time - Adrian led D-II Bloomsburg (Pa.) State from '86 to '92 - said he expected his sixth career postseason trip would arrive eventually. Of course he did.

"But let's talk about history," Adrian said. "When we came in (NSU) was at the bottom of the barrel. You have to build it. People weren't breaking our doors down in 2005 wanting to come to Norfolk State."

Now, though, another playoff coaching staff to be determined - probably not the one at Old Dominion, which appears ticketed for a first-round bye - will have to put in hours preparing for Adrian's team.

These Spartans from Norfolk State.

The football school.

Tom Robinson, (757) 446-2518, tom.robinson@pilotonline.comHamptonRoads.com/robinson

Twitter @RobinsonVP